Weather Forecast for Aug. 1, 2011

After 11 years of tossing 130 words into The Advocate’s “B” section on “weather-related” items, I appreciate our readers seeking clarifications. As noted previously, a summertime task was “stretching the clothesline.” Secured at the garage, the flagpole and the porch, the line was stretched back to the garage. Here is where mom “hung out the clothes,” kept off the ground with a “clothes prop.” A shower emptied the house whereby kids, a grandfather and neighborhood buddies scrambled to retrieve the clothes before they were re-rinsed by Mother Nature. My brother Denis was never alert when it came to bike riding and often strangled himself on that line, traversing the yard before it was taken down. Another green initiative includes people opting to hang their laundry on clotheslines instead of using energy-sucking dryers. Fastcast: Hotness.